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Tim Day

Senior Vice President, C_TEC

As senior vice president of C_TEC (Chamber Technology Engagement Center) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tim Day highlights the role of technology in our economy and advocates for emerging technology. He is also responsible for championing rational policy solutions that spur innovation and create jobs.

Day has a proven track record of advancing important technology issues through the legislative process. He joined the Chamber from Teradata Corporation, where as vice president of government affairs he coordinated and developed public policy advocacy agendas and communicated with key federal, state, and international government decision makers.

Before Teradata, Day served as vice president of government affairs at NCR Corporation, was chief of staff to Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-OH), legislative director to Congressman David Hobson (R-OH), and legislative assistant to Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX).

Day has extensive management experience in the federal government and high-tech government affairs. He has been a speaker at various seminars and symposiums on Capitol Hill, at state capitals, as well as at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Day earned a bachelor’s degree from Cedarville University in Ohio in 1987. He serves on the board of advisors for the Data Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition that advocates on behalf of the private sector and the public interest for publishing government information as standardized, machine-readable data. In 1998, Day was accepted as a delegate to the American Council of Young Political Leaders. He resides in Alexandria, Virginia.

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It's no secret that the economy is changing. As technology plays a greater role in our personal and professional lives, our economy too increasingly relies on technology to create jobs and encourage growth. Technology is the foundation of our digital economy, and its modern infrastructure is data.

However, in order to use data, we need a place to process and store it - in other words, data centers. Data centers are facilities that house the computers that process data. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are three million data centers across the country - including here in Alabama.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the “Chamber”), the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million businesses of all sizes, sectors and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations, is dedicated to promoting, protecting and defending America’s free enterprise system. The Chamber appreciates the opportunity to submit this letter to the Committee as you examine the Internet of Things (IoT) in light of the recent cyberattacks.

The Chamber created C_TEC to promote the role of technology in our economy and to advocate for rational policies that drive economic growth, spur innovation, and create jobs. As the nation’s voice for small and large businesses, the Chamber understands the transformative opportunities IoT presents for consumers, businesses, and our country’s economy. The Chamber also appreciates that regulatory and other barriers can impede the development of a nascent IoT and delay the full realization of its many benefits.

After an incident like last month’s DDoS attack on the service provider Dyn, there can be a knee jerk reaction that can lead to some senseless policy decisions. C_TEC commissioned Morning Consult to do some polling immediately after this attack occurred and found that only about 25% of Americans were aware of what had caused the large scale internet outage. On the other hand, a majority of Americans view IoT as an important technology that will impact healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and agriculture in the near future. Keeping this in mind, C_TEC feels that it is imperative that Congress proceeds cautiously to avoid stifling the innovation of this nascent technology. In collaboration with our member companies, we have developed several steps for policymakers to best address IoT. This includes:

• Work to pass the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (“DIGIT”) Act. The DIGIT Act will bring together stakeholders in government and industry to shape IoT policy, ensuring that the United States realizes the full economic potential of IoT and remains a leader in this next chapter of the Internet.

• Encourage industry and government collaboration to solve evolving security and privacy challenges. Prescriptive regulation is unnecessary and unwise at this early stage. Approaches to security and privacy must remain collaborative, flexible, and innovative over the long term—enabling solutions to evolve at the pace of the market.

• Reduce regulatory burdens, compliance costs, and overlap. A multitude of uncoordinated state and federal efforts in IoT is creating an uncertain regulatory environment. Government should evaluate existing regulatory activities and ensure that they are supportive of IoT and do not constitute unintentional barriers.

• Remove barriers to investment and infrastructure deployment at all levels. Infrastructure will be critical for IoT deployment, and the government should look for ways to promote deployment and upgrades of communications networks.

• Champion voluntary, industry-led, globally recognized, and consensus-based processes for technical and interoperability standards. Historically, the most effective process for developing standards has been driven by the private sector through a variety of open participation, globally recognized, voluntary, and consensus-based standards groups, industry consortia, and companies.

• Encourage industry and government collaboration to solve evolving security and privacy challenges. Prescriptive regulation is unnecessary and unwise at this early stage. Approaches to security and privacy must remain collaborative, flexible, and innovative over the long term—enabling solutions to evolve at the pace of the market.

• Ensure adequate flexible spectrum is available to support IoT. Ubiquitous high-speed broadband connections over licensed and unlicensed spectrum are critical to the IoT ecosystem. Efficient management of this scarce resource must be a top priority.

• Promote a skilled workforce capable of operating in the digital future. Investment in human capital will determine which countries lead in the IoT.

When it comes to technology policy, prescriptive regulation entails significant costs. We are in the early stages of IoT, and it is not yet clear what significant privacy concerns IoT poses. Indeed, the privacy issues raised by IoT may be similar to those raised by existing technologies, such as cloud computing; existing approaches are evolving at the pace of the market to safeguard legitimate privacy interests. Moreover, the FTC has not been shy about monitoring consumer-facing IoT and pursuing fraud, misrepresentation, and allegedly unreasonable practices, as it does with other consumer-facing technologies and products.

C_TEC will continue to work with our members to ensure that this technology has the legislative and regulatory environment that will allow it to thrive and for businesses to continue to innovate. The positive impacts that IoT is capable of are far too vital to the future of our economy and our lives to allow for progress to be slowed down. We look forward to working with this Committee, Congress, and the new Administration as this develops.

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